


shine your teeth 'til meaningless

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Dialogue Heavy, F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 22:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9927788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: The drink doesn’t sting as bad as Johanna’s gaze on her, but only just. “Only in stories,” she says hoarsely.“Only in stories--fuck, Katniss, you are just--” Johanna laughs, and it isn’t a nice sound. “You are just so much.”“Is that better or worse than not being enough?”post-mockingjaykatniss/johanna fic rescued from a draft from may of 2014, finished up for femslash february.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **warnings** for threatened violence, alcohol, discussions of death and suicide. 
> 
> possible implications of infidelity depending on interpretation. i think this was initially intended to be a gale/peeta/johanna/katniss fic, but you know what, i'm not entirely sure what my 2014 headspace where i was writing _hunger games fic_ was.
> 
> title from "how to fight loneliness" by wilco.

Katniss has somehow wound up in the Capitol in late summer, Johanna tossing out an invitation like it didn’t matter. 

When she gazes through the window too long at the heat shimmering over the streets, black oozes from the ground, fire pours from the sky and swallows passers-by. 

Still less nauseating than the technicolor amalgamation of August Capitol fashion. 

Maybe it doesn’t matter. 

Johanna leaves her alone more often than Peeta does. Like she can handle it. It’s been years. Like she can handle it. 

Her black hair heats like a pot in the sinking sun and she retreats to the cooler confines of the living room, drawing her feet up on the sofa, the white marshmallow of a pillow dimpling from the knife strapped around her thigh. 

Somehow, she sleeps.

She’s woken with a snick of the door. That tread--she hears it in the nightmares that wake her not curled and trembling into Peeta’s chest, but fists balled, mouth a rip of fury, Peeta’s back to her set tight and frightened until he crawls over to loosen her fingers and kiss the corners of her mouth mollified. 

There’s no one to unfold her fists now and she does only to clench one around her knife handle.

“Catnip?”

She makes an inhuman sound and launches the knife at his head. He ducks, dodges, dismayed.

“Why are you here?” she snarls.

He holds his hands up, turns. Weaponless. “For Johanna. Same as you.”

“Where is she?” she demands, bolting upright and moving to stand.

“You’d know better than me.” Gale shrugs. Still placating. She hates him fiercely, just never enough to forget when she loved him, brown face and deft deadly hands, cleaning the rabbit and pressing the button--

Katniss stiffens. “She set this up,” she says wildly. “She wanted us here, together, alone--”

“She doesn’t know I’m here.”

She pauses as she’s groping for the second knife she keeps shoved between the pillows here. Gone, probably taken by those sad-eyed, quick-fingered girls and boys passing through here to different districts when their own hold nothing but heartache, like a halfway house.

“Katniss.” Johanna’s tired voice pins the ‘ss’ flat. “Stop.”

Sitting bolt upright, Katniss clenches her fists over his knees, “Make him go,” she demands childishly.

“Gale.” Brown eyes flash like a light in a dark wood. “Go.”

Gale goes.

Johanna strides over and sits down beside her, taking up space like it was never something she had to fight for, and looks at her for a long moment. “You came.”

“I told you I would come,” she says brusquely, turning her face away quick. She feels sick. This was a mistake.

“Words are just words.” Johanna’s bitterness tastes so familiar it’s sweet. Somehow makes Katniss unwind. “Don’t get me wrong--I’m glad you’re here.”

“Glad,” Katniss scoffs. 

Johanna saunters off and returns with a bottle of something that looks and smells like chemical warfare. 

“Yeah.” Johanna takes a swig from the bottle and passes it to Katniss. “Glad. You ever heard of that?”

She almost declines before she ends up wrapping her lips around where Johanna’s mouth was and taking a deep swallow. The drink doesn’t sting as bad as Johanna’s gaze on her, but only just. “Only in stories,” she says hoarsely.

“Only in stories--fuck, Katniss, you are just--” Johanna laughs, and it isn’t a nice sound. “You are just so much.”

“Is that better or worse than not being enough?” she asks the glass rim of the bottle. It’s not really banter. She was never too good at being smart with her words. More about actions. Not to say she was good with those, either.

Johanna snorts. “You think you’re not enough?” Her hand finds Katniss’s dark knee.

Dully surprised by the touch, Katniss looks up. “You think I am?”

Her mouth jags up cruelly. “I didn’t say _that.”_

“Ow,” she mumbles, muted.

“Listen, Katniss, _none_ of us--not one damn person is enough. You never understood that. You always thought about one person.” The words launch out of her. She’s been keeping them down in her barrel for a while.

Katniss doesn’t know when she dropped the silk banner called _selflessness_ that was handed to her after she volunteered in Prim’s place. Whenever it was, it was about time. “Yeah.”

“So you’re not glad. Never been glad. Never heard of that concept.”

Her hand wraps around the cold bottle. One shoulder goes up. 

“Can you do 'okay'?” Johanna suggests. It’s curiosity rather than concern.

“Okay,” Katniss sighs. “That the best we can hope for?”

Unprompted--and she should know better, so it has to be a deliberate choice against wisdom, something Katniss has always respected that normally-pragmatic Johanna can make--she slings an arm around her shoulders.

She doesn’t so much relax as droop into her. 

Johanna runs her fingers without much care through her matted hair, hissing behind her teeth when knots hamper their progress. “What happened to your pretty braids?” 

Katniss shakes her head.

“So _‘okay.’”_ Johanna cups the word in her mouth like a Capitol delicacy. “Better than dead.”

Staring down at her ragged nails, she shakes her head again. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know?”_ she repeats, fanged. “You don’t know? If you don’t care whether you live or die, why did you fight?”

That’s a question.

Katniss gulps.

Her arm slides out from around her and Katniss seizes it, nails digging into the veins of her forearm. 

Johanna wants an answer.

Katniss has never been good with questions.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she offers at last.

Collapsing back against the couch, Johanna pushes the heel of her palm against her forehead and screws her eyes shut. 

Katniss thinks she might scream and preemptively tenses. Being deaf in one ear doesn’t make her like loud noises any more than the rest of them.

Instead, Johanna stays dreadfully quiet.

Setting down the bottle with a clink, Katniss makes to stand. Short trip. She’ll think of what to say to Peeta when she sees him.

“Do you know what you want to do now?” Johanna asks her. She’s looking down at her hands.

Katniss, from generations of people who’ve had to use their hands like hell, has always thought Johanna had good hands. Palms paler than their browned underbelly, choppy lines, sturdy fingers.

Rubbing her shoulder with a hand, Katniss shakes her head, lowers her eyes, too.

“Do you want to kiss me?”

Her stomach folds in on itself like the origami Prim used to love to make. “What?”

Johanna’s lips are wet with alcohol, and she wets them again, as if for emphasis. “Do you?”

Katniss steps forward between her scarred legs and makes a futile effort at tucking her crazed hair behind her ear. “I don’t know.”

Looking at her with those heavy, heavy eyes, Johanna doesn’t speak for a moment. She begins to lean back, turn away her proud face. “Doing pretty good at acting like you know.” Her voice is as deep as Katniss has ever heard it, and it does strange things in the hollows of her body.

Catching an echo in her throat, Katniss borrows her voice for her own. “No, that’s your talent.”

Johanna’s mouth sickles.

Actions.

Not words.

Katniss takes the cutting curve of it for herself, too.

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone cares, the place where i stopped in 2014 was the line that ends with "halfway house." i think the first half of the fic is much stronger than the second, haha. wherever i was going was...interesting.


End file.
